1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the field of call routing systems, and more particularly prioritizing the routing of calls to call center agents.
2. Description of Related Art
Call routing systems are used by companies that maintain customer service centers to route customer calls among different service centers. These call routing systems interface with customers in several different ways, perhaps the oldest being an Interactive Voice Response (“IVR”) system that allows a customer to use a telephone keypad or voice commands to receive self service access to information from a company's customer service center without assistance from a live company representative. As part of the IVR system, the customer is provided an option to speak with a live call center agent, and when such a request is made, it is necessary for the IVR system to route the pending call to a specific call center, which in turn distributes the routed call to a specific live customer service agent.
While an IVR system can provide significant cost savings to a company for providing basic information generally requested by its customers, questions or other complex information necessitating a customer to speak with a live agent requires separate call center facilities. To minimize costs, a company may outsource the administration and maintenance of these call center facilities, and, consequently, these services might be provided by several vendors. These relationships between the company and call center vendors might be governed by unique service agreements. Because of the existence of multiple vendors servicing a single company's customer service center it is necessary to route calls querying a live call center agent to an individual call center based on criteria that considers these unique service agreements.
To date, the prior art's solution to such call routing is using call routing software accessed by the IVR when a customer indicates through an appropriate command to speak with a live call center agent. Present software, including products marketed by Genesys, Cisco, and Avaya, establishes call routing through the collection and comparison of performance-based metrics for each call center. These performance-based metrics include service time per call, handling time per call, and average time to answer. The routing software collects such information, compares it for each call center, and then routes the call to the call center determined to be operating most effectively. Present software also includes reporting capabilities that detail information regarding the call delivery to the call center.
Such prior art relating to call routing that bases the routing decision only on real-time performance-based metrics is most useful for routing calls among a company's call centers that are all operated by the same vendor. Cost considerations are not at issue at the local call center level because costs can be addressed globally with the vendor. The limitations of the prior art become apparent when applied in a situation in which the call centers are operated by separate vendors. There, use of the prior art software still permits selection of a call center through use of performance-based metrics, but it does not account for routing among different vendors using criteria based upon the agreements between the company and call center vendors in addition to performance-based metrics. An improvement of the prior art would provide for a routing function among several call centers, operated by separate vendors, for a customer call based on both performance-based and subjective criteria. A further improvement for routing a call based upon subjective criteria would be consideration given to service agreement criteria defined in the service agreements between a call center vendor and the company employing the call routing system.